In today’s day and age, it’s almost unthinkable to consider gender inequality as a persisting issue. UN Women however, sees that despite decades of global advancement, discrimination towards women is still rampant worldwide. We needed to lay this bare to audiences in both developed and developing societies, to reignite a conversation everyone thought was finished. Using Google’s autocomplete function, fed by over 6 billion searches daily, we held up a mirror to the world and exposed the hidden truth on gender bias that still prevails. The shocking search results became the faces of our campaign, triggering a global PR storm and driving people to join the discussion on social media through our campaign hashtag (#womenshould). Through an integrated PR approach and impactful imagery in our campaign, we transformed the world into one enormous UN forum for the people, paving the way for real change towards gender equality.

UN Women needed to lay this bare to a multicultural audience, to people that perceives gender inequality to be an issue of the past, or an issue only affecting those in societies far away from them. We needed to reignite a conversation everyone thought was finished. We needed to invite people into this conversation through a multitude of media channels and through fostered relationships with key partners in the PR industry and educational domain, as well as the world public throughout.

The Most Shared Ad of 2013 (Adweek).

Social Good Campaign of 2013 (Ad Council).

The campaign reached 1.2 Billion Global Impressions and 224 Million Twitter Impressions. More than just mass media coverage in every continent (BBC, The Guardian, Time, Huffington Post, CNN, Times of India, Folha de Sao Paulo and countless more) it drove people to debate the topic on our campaign hashtag, TV talk shows, radio stations, blogs, PR summits and in classrooms worldwide. With a few simple facts, the campaign made people rethink the state of gender equality today and put it back on the global agenda.

We launched our campaign through Press & Outdoor, revealing for the first time shocking autocomplete results, which initiated people to join a global discussion on gender equality through our campaign hashtag #womenshould.

We then expanded the conversation through an online film, which contrasts the milestones of women over the last century with today’s search results. We seeded this film across news sites and blogs in various languages. We then collaborated with educational institutions around the world, inspiring debates as part of their curriculum. We then maximized exposure through key international PR events (2013 Global PR Summit), which further promoted a debate on social media.

Through an integrated PR strategy and impactful imagery, our message travelled far beyond the borders of print, transcending through multiple channels which all worked together to transform the world into one enormous UN forum for the people.

For many of us living in today’s modern world, it’s almost unthinkable to consider gender inequality as an ongoing issue still plaguing us. UN Women however, sees that despite decades of global advancement and progress, discrimination and prejudice towards women is still widespread on a global level, and it is very much a real issue affecting all of us collectively.

We knew for the objectives to be achieved, an integrated and bold communication approach was necessary, one that could effectively offer a newly established entity with constrained budgets, such as UN Women, the global exposure needed to reaffirm its humanitarian efforts for women, in order to drive real change. Using Google’s autocomplete function, fed by over 6 billion searches daily, we held up a mirror to the world and exposed the hidden truth on gender bias that still prevails today.